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Contextual Related Posts plugin for WordPress

Overview:

Display a list of contextually related posts for the current post.

You can select the number of posts to display and if you want to automatically display the related posts in your content / feed.

Now, you can choose to exclude posts from certain categories as well as exclude pages.

Features:

  • Display Related Posts automatically in content / feed, no need to edit template files
  • Doesn’t require the post to be tagged in order to display related posts
  • You can manually add code to your template where you want the related posts to be displayed
  • Exclude posts from categories
  • Exclude display of related posts on Pages
  • Exclude links pages in Related Posts list
  • Find related posts based on content and post title

Requirements:

Installing

  1. Download Contextual Related Posts.
  2. Extract the contents of contextual-related-posts.zip to wp-content/plugins/ folder. You should get a folder called contextual-related-posts.
  3. Activate the Plugin in WP-Admin.
  4. Goto Options > Related Posts to configure.

Options:

Below is a screenshot of the default options available.

Contextual Related Posts options

If you disable automatic display of related posts please add <?php if(function_exists('echo_ald_crp')) echo_ald_crp(); ?> to your template file where you want the related posts to be displayed.

ChangeLog:

  • 1.6.5
    • Fixed: Few code tweaks to optimise MySQL performance
    • Added: Dutch language file
  • 1.6.4
    • Fixed: Undefined constant PHP errors
  • 1.6.3
    • Fixed: The plugin will now display a list of changes in the WordPress Admin > Plugins area whenever an update is available
  • 1.6.2
    • Turned the credit option to false by default. This setting won’t effect current users.
    • Turned off borders on post thumbnails. You can customise the CSS class “crp_thumb” to style the post thumbnail
    • From the next version, the plugin will display update information in your WP-Admin
  • 1.6.1
    • Fixed: Custom output was not detecting styles properly
    • Fixed: Incorrect XHTML code was being generated when using special characters in the post title
  • 1.6
    • New: The plugin extracts the first image in the post and displays that if the post thumbnail and the post-image meta field is missing
    • New: Display excerpts in the list
    • New: Credit link to the CRP page added. You can choose to turn this off, though I would appreciate if you leave it on.
    • Updated: All parts of the list are now wrapped in classes for easy CSS customisation
  • 1.5.2
    • Fixed: Display of thumbnails using postmeta
  • 1.5.1
    • Fixed: Numeric options were not being saved correctly
  • 1.5
    • Added an Option to display post thumbnails
    • The output can be completely customised now
  • 1.4.2
    • Fixed: Using doublequotes in the title would mess up the screen
    • Fixed: Errors when the mySQL index was being regenerated
  • 1.4.1
    • Added Italian language
    • Minor fix for text in the admin page
  • 1.4
    • Added complete localization support
    • Added button to recreate the mySQL FULLTEXT index
  • 1.3.1 – Fixed bug that didn’t blank out posts even when option was selected
  • 1.3
    • Better optimization in WP-Admin area.
    • Fixed compatibility problems with Simple Tags plugin
    • Fixed large number of queries being generated
  • 1.2.2 – Minor bug fixed about limit of posts
  • 1.2.1 – Fixed a minor bug that caused compatiblity problems with PHP4
  • 1.2
    • Option to blank output in case nothing is found
    • Exclude posts from certain categories
    • Exclude pages in list of related posts
    • Option to choose if you want related posts to be displayed on pages
  • 1.1.1 – Now you can optionally choose if you want to use the post content to search for related posts
  • 1.1 – Fixed MySQL index key conflicts by using a more unique index key name.
  • 1.0.1 – Release

To Do:

  • Select random posts if there are no similar posts
  • Comment below and tell me what you would like to see added to this plugin

Writing and testing plugins takes a good amount of time. If you like the plugin and find it useful and would like to donate something for my work please do click the Paypal Donate button below. The payment is secure. I haven’t filled in any amount. Feel free to donate what you please. Any amount is welcome. Thank you :)

License

All files and their contents are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Questions or Bugs

Known Bugs

If you have any questions or would like to report any bugs, please see how you can get support.

Languages

The following translations are available:

If you would like to make available a translation for the plugin, please do drop me an email.

Downloads

Download Contextual Related Posts
Number of downloads: 109,510
Rating: 5/5
Page on WP Extend

153 Comments

Leave a comment
  1. Bill Bolmeier / Jan 25 2009

    A css style class so I can style it.

    I’d say you should put credit on there like the other popular related post plugin.

    Don’t show page results, just posts.

    • Ajay / Jan 27 2009

      I thought about credit, wasn’t sure. I think I can do that as I did with my other plugin Add to Feed

      There is already a CSS style class for the related posts… it is called crp_related and is wrapped around the div.

      I’m working on the page results thingy :)

  2. Jody+ / Jan 28 2009

    Hi,

    Just upgraded to 1.1 and I’m receiving the following error when I try to reactivate:

    “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ‘)’ in /nfs/c04/h01/mnt/59463/domains/quovadis.soultopology.com/html/wp-content/plugins/contextual-related-posts/contextual-related-posts.php on line 103″

    any thoughts on how to resolve this?

  3. Jody+ / Jan 28 2009

    Disregard my previous comment, I’ll look elsewhere (didn’t read your submission button until I’d already clicked it).

  4. Chuck Young / Jan 28 2009

    My wordpress said that an update was available for the contextual plugin. I clicked on the automatic upgrade and got the following error:

    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ‘)’ in /homepages/14/d253571688/htdocs/publicblog/wp-content/plugins/contextual-related-posts/contextual-related-posts.php on line 103

    Any ideas what I do now?

  5. Ajay / Jan 28 2009

    This should be fixed now. I’ve released v1.1.1. You can download it from above.

    If you already have v1.1 or below installed, the update should show up in WP-Admin

  6. Bill Bolmeier / Jan 28 2009

    I believe line 103 now has a comma after the last argument in the function and should not have a comma. Is that true?

  7. Bill Bolmeier / Jan 28 2009

    Never mind.

  8. Ajay / Jan 28 2009

    That won’t be an issue :)

  9. Daniel / Feb 1 2009

    I would suggest deleting the two br tags after the div container. I noticed that this plug-in is what updated and borked my lay-out from the original plug-in Mark developed. There should be no reason br tags should be implemented in lay-out when it’s a simple matter of using margin or padding (padding if you’re concerned about IE6) in your template stylesheet. I’ve manually deleted the additional br tags for now, and am now updating my theme file to use the new function name.

    • Ajay / Feb 1 2009

      Good idea. I’ll knock it off in the next version release.

  10. Daniel / Feb 1 2009

    Also, I’m noticing that it’s picking up pages and listing them. Is there a quick way in your code to exclude pages? (I might suggest to include this as another option in settings in the future).

    I might also suggest changing the ‘pages’ reference in the settings to ‘posts’. There is a difference between pages and posts in most WordPress user’s minds, and it would probably eliminate any confusion as to what the function is for.

    Otherwise, very nice upgrade to Mark’s plug-in. I appreciate it.

  11. Ajay / Feb 1 2009

    Sorry about the confusion. I must have missed the reference. I always ensure that it stays different.

    I think I can work on excluding the pages out. Will have to play around with a few options.

    Am updating the TODO list with these changes :)

  12. Daniel / Feb 1 2009

    I suspect then when you’re ready, the plug-in update will show in my update panel and I shall be rewarded handsomely.

    Take care, for now.

  13. Hikari / Feb 6 2009

    This is a very nice plugin, I just found it and am testing.

    Only question I have, is if there is a way to manually add related posts to a post, instead of letting them random.

    • Ajay / Feb 6 2009

      Well, it isn’t really “random”. The related posts are based on the title and content of your posts.

      If you want to manually add related posts, you can just include it in the content of the post while compiling it.

  14. jaggerkieth / Feb 15 2009

    hi,

    i noticed that the related post is not showing on my feeds. check it out http://www.urfresh.info/feed

    my feed is on summary m0de.

    hope you will fix this soon, thanks a lot!

    • Ajay / Feb 15 2009

      Does it work if you shift your feeds to full?

      • jaggerkieth / Feb 15 2009

        Still haven’t tried, but my brother is also using this plugin on full text, and it is working fine.

        Is there anyway it will work with summary mode on feeds?

        I hope there is.

        • Ajay / Feb 15 2009

          I don’t think this is possible. And, honestly, I don’t recommend this with summary feeds.

          And, why exactly are you running summary feeds? It is recommended to run the full feed always for the benefit of those who chose to subscribe to your site.

  15. Ingrid / Feb 26 2009

    You’re a lifesaver – this plugin is exactly what I needed. Thanks!

  16. Dean Saliba / Feb 27 2009

    I upgraded to 1.2 just now but when I try to turn the plugin back on I get this:

    syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in /public_html/wp-content/plugins/contextual-related-posts/admin.inc.php on line 38

    Can anyone help?

    • Ajay / Feb 27 2009

      I haven’t seen this problem on three of the blogs. Can you delete the plugin and readd from scratch?

      Are you running WP 2.7?

    • Ajay / Feb 27 2009

      I’ve updated the plugin with a fix I believe should work now. Can you download and give it a shot?

  17. jaggerkieth / Feb 28 2009

    Hi, I found an errort to this plugin, before when I’m viewing a single post, it only has 30-60+ queries, but when starting to use the plugin it shows that a single post page has a 1900-2000+ queries. This is not n0rmal, it should I think only query the database less than 10 queries, kn0wing that it will only query 5 related post.

    Please fix this problem.
    This has an impact on my site.

    • jaggerkieth / Feb 28 2009

      I tried to unclick the option that it will base the related post on title and body, and now it is only basing on the title but still it has 700-1000+ queries.

      Please do an immediate action for this.
      Thank you!

      • Ajay / Feb 28 2009

        Hi,

        Can you check if it is clashing with another plugin? I have it running on http://demoblog.ajaydsouza.net/ and I see the usual number of queries.

        • jaggerkieth / Mar 1 2009

          I have a total of 1900 posts, and some of them has 200+ related posts.

          i already tried deactivating my plugins to see if there are any c0nflict but still it remains like that.

          What I noticed is that when you already have may post crp will surely query the database many times. Which is I think is not normal.

          Some of my post has only about 10 related post and crp has small db query. but when my post has many related post it queries many times.

  18. jaggerkieth / Mar 1 2009

    And in addition to that, knowing that i only limit the related post to 5, it should not query the database many times.

    700-2000+ db query is really not good.

    • Ajay / Mar 1 2009

      Hi,

      Let me run a few checks out here as well. I don’t notice a problem on this site as well as Techtites where I have it running to see if there is any underlying problem.
      Give me a few days :)

      BTW, I suggest installing WP-Super-Cache either ways on your blog.

    • Ajay / Mar 1 2009

      Hi, you’re perfectly right about this. I have a feeling as to where the problem is. And I have a “possible solution”. Give me about a day or two of testing across my blogs for the same.

    • Ajay / Mar 1 2009

      Good news! Fixed, and released. Check out v1.3.

      • jaggerkieth / Mar 2 2009

        Wow!

        Great!
        This version fixed the problem!

        My site now has less than 100 queries on single post page!

        Superb support!

        Thank you so much!

        MORE POWER!

        • Ajay / Mar 2 2009

          Good to know that :) Do spread the word…

          • jaggerkieth / Mar 2 2009

            Yup!

            I will definitely do that!:p

  19. Hikari / Mar 1 2009

    Great job in v1.2.x, tnx!!

  20. Carl / Mar 2 2009

    Hi, I know this probably isn’t the best place to ask, but the WordPress support forum is rarely helpful.

    The problem I am having does prevent me from using this plugin though, so I will ask here.

    I noticed that my feed is showing excerpts and summaries only, regardless of whether I have it set to use “Full Text” or “Summary”.

    This also is preventing certain plugins from showing up on the feed.

    This occurs with a fresh install of WordPress with zero plugins installed.

    Any ideas?

    • Ajay / Mar 2 2009

      Honestly, I have no clue why you wouldn’t be able to serve full feeds. I haven’t seen this problem anywhere yet. Sadly, I guess the WordPress support forums are the best shot still…

    • jaggerkieth / Mar 2 2009

      If that’s the case you may want to reinstall your wordpress blog, or recheck your settings on Reading Settings.

  21. Robert@PNG / Mar 10 2009

    Hi,

    Really glad that I found this plugin as the Related Posts plugin that I was using is no longer supported by the author.

    If you are open to suggestions – I do have one point for improvement….

    The algorithm used to select related posts could do with some improvement and it would be really nice to see some additional options to influence the selection of related posts.

    R

    • Ajay / Mar 10 2009

      What kind of improvements are you suggesting? Also, what additional options would you like to see?

      • Robert@PNG / Mar 10 2009

        Ajay,

        Thanks for responding…

        One of the reasons the “Related Posts” plugin from the other author was/is so popular is that he gave the plugin user several settings for fine-tuning the “related-ness” feature. Also, it seems to have a greater success at finding “very” related posts.

        Something else that would be nice would be to have an easy way of tailoring the display of the related post itself eg: date, author, excerpt etc…

        Are you planning on “evolving” this plugin?

        A tip… current users of the “other” plugin will slowly start to jump ship (so to speak) if the author remains AWOL for much longer. These folks will potentially be seeking a similar plugin and expect equal or better features.

        R

  22. Sunil / Mar 12 2009

    I have added this to my blog myhtmlworld.com seems very useful. Thanks

  23. Joe / Apr 1 2009

    Ajay,

    I like the idea of the plugin, and it seems to be working for a lot of people. Im probably missing something insanely easy. I installed it, activated it, checked the settings, but nothing appears to be different on my blog? Is there a specific way I need to insert it in each post? Thanks for your time!

    Joe

    • Ajay / Apr 1 2009

      Check the manual instructions under options above.

      • Joe / Apr 1 2009

        Ajay, thanks, read over above. So even though I didn’t disable anything, I need to put it into the template to display it after each blog post? Just wanted to double check!

        • Ajay / Apr 1 2009

          Yup… in the loop, just after the the_content portion

  24. Frank Thomas / Jul 18 2011

    Just a heads up. If you have a blog that has a lot of posts (more then a couple 1,000′s) this plugin breaks the front page. If you want to see an example, drop me an email and I’ll demonstrate.

    Thanks,

    Frank

    • Ajay / Jul 21 2011

      Frank, care to elaborate. Both my blogs got a much more than a 1,000 posts. Same with several other blogs I am aware this plugin is on.

  25. Jason Morehouse / Jul 30 2011

    Nice job on the plugin – much thanks. Better than the last few related posts plugins I tried.

  26. Margje / Aug 18 2011

    Is it possible to exclude one singe page ?

    Margje

    • Ajay / Aug 18 2011

      Currently there is no way to exclude only a single page from this list.

      • Gino Croes / Aug 23 2011

        There is a way, with the help of another plugin: Ninja Page Categories and Tags (http://wpninjas.net/plugins/ninja-page-categories-and-tags/). This plugin lets u define categories for pages, which in turn u can disable in the categories of this plugin. Simply place the unwanted page into a excluded category, and it works!

        • JP / Sep 21 2011

          This is breaking my site… I disabled a bunch of plugins, but it’s still giving me issues :(

          • Ajay / Sep 22 2011

            What exactly do you mean by “breaking my site”

          • JP / Sep 22 2011

            Ajay,

            I was referring to the Ninja categories plugin. It was causing errors when I saved a draft. But I changed some things and got it to work. Thanks!

      • JP / Sep 21 2011

        Great plugin, but I have a feature request.

        Can you make it so that when I’m editing a page or a post I can select whether I want that page in the index of related posts or not?

        Most of the content on my site is on pages and there are a few pages that I do not want showing up in my related content. But, I can’t find a way to only exclude a few pages.

        I’ve been looking at tons of plugins like yours, but none of them have this ability. I think it would really make yours stand out more than it already does.

        And, it’d be nice to not have to implement a work around :)

        Thanks!

        • Ajay / Sep 22 2011

          JP, that is a good idea. I’ll put in on the to-do list.

          • JP / Sep 22 2011

            Yeah, another thought is to make it so you can decide not to display the related posts on a particular post as well.

            Just having two checkboxes added to the sidebar when you’re editing a page or post would be simple but better than every other plugin :)

  27. sonic / Aug 24 2011

    Dear Ajay,

    I have a problem, Is it possible make Thumbnail to be equal proportion, Thumbnail all out of shape.
    (I ONLY WANT SET WIDTH OF Thumbnail)

    Thanks

    Sonic

    • Ajay / Aug 24 2011

      I don’t have a perfect solution right now for the thumbnails. I am experimenting with using timthumb as a base for image resizing. However, this won’t be in the very near future.

  28. G. Croes / Aug 24 2011

    I have a bug in this plugin. It works very good in general, but for some reason it sometimes displays the very same article in its related pages/posts list. The link in this case doesn’t work, it directs to a non-existing page, resulting in the 404 page. Has this happened before? Any solutions?

    • Ajay / Aug 24 2011

      I have personally not observed this behaviour. Does it happen only for a specific article?

  29. Cindy h / Aug 24 2011

    I tried the plug in and came up with an error. I could not see settings. When I tried to activated plug in. Nothing shows up at all. I will try and install manuel and see if that works.

  30. serkan / Aug 25 2011

    hello ajay,

    now if set the “Post thumbnail meta field (the meta should point contain the image source):”

    but no thumbs are showing, if i check my site source code it does indeed pull the image/thumb but like this:

    http://www.mysite.com/thumb.jpg

    while the correct path is:

    http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/thumbnails/thumb.jpg

    how can i fix this?

    thanks

    • Ajay / Aug 27 2011

      In that field you need to enter the post meta name.
      The that you showed above needs to go into The plugin will first check if the post contains a thumbnail. If it doesn’t then it will check the meta field. If this is not available, then it will show the default image as specified below:

      • serkan / Aug 27 2011

        as below?

  31. viveo / Sep 12 2011

    Hi,

    great work on this plugin.

    Only one thing I would really need more is the ability to add style to the image. Is that possible?
    something similar with “HTML to display before each list item” would be perfect, but maybe there is already a way to do it???

    another great addition would be the proportional image resizing, but that would be the sugar topping :)

    • Ajay / Sep 12 2011

      Viveo, the ability to style the plugin already exists. Just style crp_thumb.

      Regarding proportional resizing, this is still a major WIP, since I haven’t zeroed in on an exact method of doing this.

      • viveo / Sep 13 2011

        thanks! now working great!

  32. Jean / Sep 14 2011

    Love this plugin except It puts Bullets (Inherited from my theme) in front of the mini thumbnails…

    • Ajay / Sep 18 2011

      Jean, you can use CSS to style the output created by the plugin. Instead of using a list, you can customise the output in the options to something else.

      • Brad Smith / Nov 25 2011

        I’m trying to CSS the output into a horizontal list and having some trouble. Ideally I would like each item to have the thumbnail img on top with the post title text below and everything centered.

        As a starting point I added the following to my css file but it is not changing the output. What am I missing?

        /* Contextual Related Posts
        ———————————————————— */

        #crp_thumb .li {
        margin-left: 0;
        padding: 3px 15px;
        border-right: 1px solid #000;
        height: 180px;
        width: 150px;
        list-style: none;
        display: inline;
        }

        • Ajay / Nov 25 2011

          Brad, I suggest changing the settings in the “Customise the output” section to change them to divs with class names and then style the divs. These are usually better to format than lists.

          • Brad Smith / Nov 26 2011

            Thanks for the response. I got it to look mostly like I wanted except the thumbnail images were squashed and I could not figure it out. I had fun playing trying to make it work though.

  33. Ozgur Nevres / Sep 27 2011

    Hi, thank you for this great plugin. I am wondering that how do you decide which posts are related to given post? (I am not asking the full algorithm, i am just asking, for example, do you use tf/idf?)

    I was planning that store my post_post relations in a custom post_post table. But i think your approach is not this, right?

    • Ajay / Sep 30 2011

      The plugin uses mysql’s inbuilt matching algorithm.
      I don’t save the related posts because the related list will never be static on a blog that keeps getting new posts. I still need to adapt the plugin for even better matches.

  34. Graham / Oct 1 2011

    I’d like to be able to exclude the related posts from appearing on certain categories or specific pages. I can prevent certain categories from appearing within the related posts list, but what I want is the other way round…! I want to include all categories/pages as being available for listing as related posts BUT I want to display the resulting lists on my entire website (except a few pages).

    It would be great to have on the Edit Post or Edit Page an option box allowing related posts to show or not show for the item being edited.

    • Ajay / Oct 3 2011

      Graham, this feature isn’t there yet. But, I’ll put this on to the TO-DO list.

  35. Marinho / Oct 7 2011

    Hi! How can I change the language on contextual related posts?

    I’ve finish to translate do Brazilian Portuguese and I’ve a crp-PO.po & crp-PO.mo files. Then… how can I use this files to translate your plugin?

    Thanks!

    Marinho
    WP-Brasil

    • Ajay / Oct 7 2011

      Marinho, I believe the files need to be called crp-pt_BR

  36. Share Share / Oct 13 2011

    I want to change color of related post links because links have the same color with default link of theme. Can you help me to resolve this problem? Thank you very much!
    For example:
    color of normal related post link: red;
    color when mouse moves over: blue

    • Ajay / Oct 14 2011

      You can use CSS to style the links by adding this to your theme.

      #crp_related a and #crp_related a:hover need to be styled. Check this tutorial on the basics.

  37. AOA / Oct 15 2011

    I’m using WordPress 3.1.4.

    Got this message when trying to activate the latest version plugin.

    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in ******changguohua.com/wp-content/plugins/contextual-related-posts/contextual-related-posts.php on line 102

    please help…

    • Ajay / Oct 15 2011

      Can you delete the plugin and re-install it with a fresh copy?

      • AOA / Oct 16 2011

        No better luck. The same old message: …/changguohua.com/wp-content/plugins/contextual-related-posts/contextual-related-posts.php on line 102

  38. Octavio / Oct 21 2011

    Great plugin, I use it in my clients sites and they love it! And is full customizable!

  39. maxbux / Oct 30 2011

    Awesome Plugin! Thanks!

    I will pick this over YARRP any day :-)

    Just a feature suggestion, it would be great to create a widget for this plugin. I have to display on sidebars using (PHP Code Widget) and it at times breaks stuff :-(

    Thanks Again

    • Ajay / Nov 3 2011

      Let me take a look at this Max

      Thanks for your wishes :)

  40. Christoph Daum / Nov 3 2011

    Great Plugin.
    As I used a quite important custom taxomony in my posts i wanted the option to show the custom taxonomy.

    This is how I solved it.

    I added inside the “contextual-related-posts.php” after(after 119):

    if ($crp_settings['show_excerpt']) {
    $output .= ‘ ‘.crp_excerpt($search->ID,$crp_settings['excerpt_length']).”;
    }

    the following lines:

    /* Show Custom Taxonomy in related Posts – Christoph Daum – http://www.apermo.de */
    if ($crp_settings['show_custom_taxonomy']) {
    $custom = get_the_term_list( $search->ID, $crp_settings['show_custom_taxonomy'], ”, ‘, ‘, ” );
    if (!empty($custom))
    {
    $output .= ‘ – ‘.$custom.”;
    }
    }
    /* end Show Custom Taxonomy in related Posts*/

    And inside “the admin.inc.php”:
    After:
    $crp_settings[show_credit] = (($_POST['show_credit']) ? true : false);

    This:
    /* Show Custom Taxonomy in related Posts – Christoph Daum – http://www.apermo.de */
    $crp_settings[show_custom_taxonomy] = $_POST['show_custom_taxonomy'];
    /* end Show Custom Taxonomy in related Posts */

    —————

    After:

    <input type="textbox" name="excerpt_length" id="excerpt_length" value="”>

    This:

  41. thenorth / Nov 30 2011

    Hello,

    Thanks for the perfect plugin.

    Would you please show me how to display the date/month/year after the post title?

    * For example:

    Related Post:

    Export import post title (29.11.2011)
    Clinton trip tests the waters (28.11.2011)
    Mullet faces arraignment in beard case (28.11.2011)
    Solar plane promises new era of flight (26.11.2011)
    UK strikes biggest since ’89? (25.11.2011)

    Thanks and best regards,

    • Ajay / Dec 9 2011

      Unfortunately, you can’t do that right now, unless you modify the code of the plugin yourself

      • thenorth / Dec 10 2011

        I know i must to modify something, so i need your help about this issue. I think every peoples using your plugin needs this featured too.

  42. Bryan Eggers / Dec 3 2011

    This is the best and only related posts plugin that works properly on my site with several thousand posts. The only think I’d like to suggest is that the thumbnail be physically resized because right now they are the same size at the original image. Any chance of that in a future version? Thanks!

    • Ajay / Dec 7 2011

      Bryan, I’m working in the background to use timthumb for the thumbnails display. I plan on releasing a version when I am sure everything goes well (at least in my testing)

  43. Saraa / Dec 7 2011

    Really happy to have found the only linking post widget that will work for my blog. Especially as a serious technophobe, the installation and editing is super easy. However i can’t figure out how to make the related posts appear in a horizontal list…?
    Thank you.

  44. VizFact / Dec 8 2011

    Hi Ajay. I am trying to get the text to wrap around the featured images in the related posts output.

    I love the plug in. Please consider assisting me with this. Thank you!

    Also, I was wonder If I could text to wrap the images in the field named, “HTML to display before each list item:” ?

    or do I have to edit the plug in?

    • Ajay / Dec 8 2011

      VizFact, most changes can be made via CSS styles usually. However, I am not sure about what exactly you mean by “wrapping text”

      • VizFact / Dec 8 2011

        I am using the show thumbnail option and it works well, but I have it set up in 300pix sidebar and the sentences (like the post title) causes extra text lines to appear below the thumbnail when I would like to have that post title, for example, aligned left or right of the thumbnail image rather than tapering off under the thumbnail.

        Maybe I am not using the right terms but I think text wrapping is what its called. I am a novice css editor but with some direction I am sure I can figure it out with a point in the right direction.

        I am not sure whether to use an indent code, or an align code, or if its is in the php or the css.

        A link to pics of what I mean is below – I hope it helps

        http://vizfact.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/related_posts_sample.png – Text not wrapped

        http://vizfact.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/text_wrapped.png – text wrapped

        http://vizfact.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/text_wrapped_2.png – text wrapped

        I know we can do this! I am sure its a simple fix.

        • Ajay / Dec 9 2011

          You need to style the crp_thumb to float:left and the crp_title and crp_text to float:right

          I am experimenting with CSS code myself, so that I can provide some ready-to-go templates for users of the plugin. However, I don’t have an immediate solution ready for this currently.

          • VizFact / Dec 10 2011

            hmm, ok, I will see if I can figure it out. Thank you!

          • VizFact / Dec 10 2011

            oh…In which file should I put it? (where do I start?) Keep in mind I am a novice in this area but I do have a test blog that I experiment on.

            Thank you!

  45. thenorth / Dec 9 2011

    Hi Ajay, would you mind answer my question above?

    • VizFact / Dec 9 2011

      Mine too, comments still in moderation.

  46. Melissa Cleaver / Dec 15 2011

    Hello,

    I love how accurate this plugin is, but I’d really like to style the CSS for the results, for I don’t like the way the results look.

    First, they display in list style, but is it possible to display the results in one straight line (sort of like how LinkedWithin does)? If so, what would I need to add to my CSS style file?

    If that’s not possible, could you please tell me how to style the CSS so that the text is at least centered with the thumbnail? Right now, the thumbnail is displayed and the text shows up at the bottom of it, which leaves a great deal of empty space. Thanks so much for your help with this.

  47. Melissa Cleaver / Dec 15 2011

    Hello,

    One other possible change to the plugin I would suggest. Could you please provide an option to make the related links dofollow? This way, you could easily add some valid internal links which would help SEO, I believe. Thanks again for the great plugin.

    • Ajay / Dec 16 2011

      Currently, the plugin doesn’t have any nofollow being added. Isn’t this treated as dofollow, or do you need to manually specify this?

      • Melissa Cleaver / Dec 16 2011

        Good question…I’m not sure. The only reason that I think the links are showing as nofollow is because I tested them with a Firefox plugin called SEO4Firefox. This plugin showed the links as nofollow. Thanks for checking on this though. I’ll go back and make sure that I haven’t accidentally made them nofollow with any of my blog’s settings.

        • Melissa Cleaver / Dec 16 2011

          Oops…sorry! I checked and I had an option misconfigured in an SEO plugin I was using. All of those links are dofollow now, so this is definitely a MUST-HAVE plugin! Great job! :)

  48. Melissa Cleaver / Dec 15 2011

    Hello,

    Just wanted to share what I did CSS-wise which formatted my posts kind of like LinkWithin plugin used to: Visit my site: http://www.mommylivingthelifeofriley.com to see what this style looks like.

    This is what I have in the Contextual plugin options page:

    Number of related posts to display: 3

    Title of related posts: Related Posts You Might Also Enjoy:

    HTML before posts:

    HTML before each item:

    HTML after each item:

    HTML after each post:

    Thumbnail dimensions: 120 x 120

    This is what I have in my CSS style file:

    /* contextual related plugin */

    #postcontent {width:550px;}
    #postcontent a {width:150px; margin:10px; text-decoration:none;}
    #postcontent img {display:block; border:3px solid #c5eeee; margin: 5px 0px 10px 0px;}
    #postcontent a:hover {color: #c5eeee;}
    #postcontent a:hover img {border:3px solid #CD1076;}
    #postcontent span {display:block; font-size:smaller;}

    Maybe this won’t work with particular themes, but I’m loving the way things look now! :) Hope it helps!

    • Ajay / Dec 16 2011

      Melissa, thanks for the code. I like the way the related posts are being displayed on your site. I am currently working on a version that should include a few “themes”. Will release it if all goes as planned.

      • Mike / Dec 16 2011

        Yeah, great job, Melissa. I also like the way it looks on your website. I am looking forward to the new version with predefined settings. :)

  49. Jessica / Jan 3 2012

    Hello there, thank you for this plugin. I’ve styled it so that four square thumbnails display at the bottom of each post – I love the punch of color it displays: http://balancingeverything.com/2011/12/23/christmas-eve/

    I would like related posts to show in my feed as well, but since I’m using the thumbnails styled in a list, they display a bit odd – four large thumbnails stacked in a list.

    I’m currently using a different plugin to insert related links into the feed in a numbered text list, but I’d rather stick with yours. Is there a way I can have it keep the thumbnail display on posts but just do an ordered link list in the feed?

    Thank you very much!

    • Ajay / Jan 4 2012

      Jessica, unfortunately, there is no way to do this directly right now without some code changes. But, I actually like this idea and I’ll put it in my to-do.

      • Jessica / Jan 4 2012

        Thanks for the reply – I’ll check back in, I think it’d be a great addition to the plugin.

        • thenorth / Jan 5 2012

          Hello Jessica,

          Your style four square thumbnails display is awesome. Would you please show me how to do that?

          Thank you!!!

          • Jessica / Jan 5 2012

            Sure, here’s my CSS:

            #crp_related ul{position:relative; top:0px; left:7px; padding:0px; margin:0px; display:inline}
            #crp_related ul li{display:inline}
            #crp_related ul li a{text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold; font-size:12px; padding:0px 2px 4px 2px}
            #crp_related img{padding:4px; background:#F9F9F9; border:1px solid #ccc}
            #crp_related img:hover{background:#ccc}

            :o )

        • Jean / Jan 5 2012

          Looks good, but you are missing Good opportunity for Text Links Keywords…

          • Jessica / Jan 5 2012

            Oh it’s just a little personal blog, I’m not worried about SEO at all – in fact I have search engines blocked from the site. But yes, if you were worried about search engine rankings, I’d keep the post titles in there under the thumbnails.

  50. giuseppe / Jan 13 2012

    Hi, it is possible not showing the related posts in a specific category? I have 2 pages and i wanto to show related posts only in one of them

    • Ajay / Jan 15 2012

      You will need to use the manually install option and edit your theme files. There isn’t an automatic way to do this

      • Mike / Jan 16 2012

        Is there any chance that you will implement the exclusion of a particular category in a future version of this plugin?

  51. Paolo / Jan 21 2012

    Hello, what happen if i click on “recreate index” button?

  52. kadir / Jan 23 2012

    thanks firstly for plugin. i want display related posts under the comments, not top of them. how can i do it?

    • kadir / Jan 23 2012

      Note: I made it with php if(function_exists(‘echo_ald_crp’)) echo_ald_crp(); code but style corrupted. I tried with made code in single.php and comments.php but style not works like works on the top view.

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